N-BASE BRIEFING 149 - 20th September 1998
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149.1 News in Brief
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Report never existed
A report used to justify a government decision to allow the
controversial THORP reprocessing plant at Sellafield to
start working apparently never existed. The report from
accountants Touche Roche concluded that THORP would
earned at least GBP900 million for the Uk and this was
used to provide economic justification for the plant being
approved. The report was used in 1993 by the then
environment minister Mr John Gummer as part of the
justification for the plant - but all requests at the
time for the report to be published were rejected.
Officials have now admitted that report in fact never
existed. All that did exist, a former adviser to Mr
Gummer said recently, was a series of spreadsheets which
did not more than repeat figures given by British Nuclear
Fuels, the operators of THORP and Sellafield.
Contamination no danger
The Scottish Environment Protection Agency has concluded
that an incident last year when radioactive carbon
dioxide at the Hunterston nuclear power station contaminated
a tanker also used to supply gas to the soft drinks industry
posed only negligible risk to the public. The incident
caused considerable concern at the time and prompted changes
in the distribution of gas so different dedicated tankers
were used to supply carbon dioxide to nuclear plants and
the Scottish Office also issued a food hazard warning
for drinks manufacturers to undertake extra monitoring
and checks.
Dounreay changes
Commenting recently on suggestions that the director
and/or senior management at Dounreay should resign
following the damning criticism in the safety audit of
the site carried out by regulators the Scottish Secretary
of State, Mr Donald Dewar, said: "The management team is
being strengthened and people are being brought in. That is
a natural development. Dr Nelson [the site director]
will be going in the course of time - he retires in April
- and that's another change."
Report on the Web
The highly critical safety audit report of Dounreay
carried out by the Health and Safety Executive and the
Scottish Environment Protection Agency is available on the
internet at - http://www.open.gov.uk/hse/nsd/dounreay.pdf
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